StubHub Is Compromised, BioCatch to the Rescue

Hackers, attackers and cyber criminals have been busy breaching companies of all shapes and sizes. StubHub and Goodwill are two of the latest victims. It has just come to light that StubHub, an eBay company, was breached in March 2013. More than 1600 accounts were compromised, and cyber criminals used the stolen credentials to purchase 3,500 tickets to major events. What makes the StubHub incident different is that attackers used stolen credentials, with legitimate username and passwords to make purchases. In these types of cases, the Web Application Firewall (WAF) and password authentication are inadequate measures of protection.

The use of two-factor authentication would have definitely helped. It’s gotten to a point where two-factor authentication should be used by every online company that deals with credit cards data. Code Spaces found out the hard way, by not implementing a robust defense in depth strategy, including two-factor authentication, they had to close down the business, because the damage from the security breach was so great. There is one product in the market today that protects against the use of stolen credentials, and the name of the company is BioCatch.

BioCatch is a Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution that incorporates advanced behavioral algorithms that perform continuous authentication. It takes a proactive approach by analyzing mouse and click activity of the users, then base-lining the history, and if there are any anomalies, it boots the imposters out. In addition, BioCatch injects an “invisible challenge response” that helps it detect imposters from legitimate users. In the StubHub case, if a legitimate user has a history of purchasing two tickets every other month in the same price range, anything that detracts from that activity is flagged by BioCatch, and action is taken immediately, especially if a rogue tries to goes on a spending spree with the intention of buying lots of highly priced tickets.